To cap it all

The champagne probably flowed without the popping of corks at Alcan Packaging’s launch of Maestro, last May - the ‘first metal champagne bottle closure’ and the sparkling wine industry’s answer to the screw cap now commonplace on still wine.

The closure, which has been three years in the making and cost €1 million to develop, consists of a dome, a lever and an over-cap closure which sits on a crown cork. It will soon be seen adorning French vineyard Champagne Duval-Leroy’s Clos des Bouveries’ 2004 vintage.

“Two factors prompted us to develop Maestro: the success of our Stelvin screw cap for wine and demand for an alternative closure to cork for sparkling wine,” explains Karine Herrewyn, marketing and communication manager with Alcan Packaging Capsules. “Some producers want to replace cork to eliminate the risk of cork taint, a problem which causes a significant quantity of bottles to be unfit for consumption. The other problem with cork is that oxygen permeability differs from one product to the next, whereas with Maestro permeability is consistent for every bottle.”

Two months after the launch of Maestro, Italian firm Guala Closures brought out an aluminium screw cap for slightly sparkling wine. Branded Moss, the closure is said to have a special liner that maintains carbonation levels for up to two bars without any loss of flavour. Several Argentinean producers are already using the closure for wines available on the domestic market, and Brazil’s largest sparkling wine producer Salton Winery has adopted the closure for its new Lunae Frisante range, which will be exported worldwide.

So do such innovations signal the death knell for the traditional cork closure? Not according to Portuguese cork producer Amorim. It says that while the cork’s share of the wine closure market has receded from 85% a few years ago to 70%, in actual terms, the number of bottles using cork closures has increased.

In any case, Amorim’s marketing and communications director, Carlos de Jesus, doesn’t necessarily see it as a bad thing if the market for cork does shrink.

“There are over 600 companies making cork closures. Some are growing; some are not. The growth is quality linked, meaning that cork companies who deliver quality are doing well. When companies who haven’t invested in quality produce bad cork stoppers we all get tarred with the same brush, so actually, those companies being pushed out of the market is the best thing that could happen to quality cork.”

Responding to criticism that oxygen ingress is inconsistent with cork, Amorim points to the latest research from Bordeaux University, which found that ‘cork stoppers play an important role in the development of wine in bottle, through managed micro-oxygenation’.

Amorim might not be threatened by the burgeoning alternative closure market, but it has still responded to the heightened competition with the launch of its Acquamark closure. This is touted as providing a natural cork stopper at a competitive price. It takes its name from the water-based coating that fills in the shank lenticells for maximum sealing capacity.

“It allows us to compete aggressively with producers of alternative closures, particularly in the ‘basic’ and ‘popular premium’ sectors of the wine market,” says Mr de Jesus.

Just as alternative closures are emerging for wine producers, beer producers have another closure option at their disposal: the PET screw cap.

Historically, the oxygen sensitive nature of beer has posed an insurmountable obstacle to using plastics screw caps on PET beer bottles. Packaging beer in PET requires the bottles to have sufficient barrier properties to avoid oxygen ingress and the closure to have oxygen scavenging properties to absorb oxygen in the headspace.

Bericap has overcome these challenges with a crown cork design which looks very similar to the traditional beer crown cork. Branded the DoubleSeal SuperShorty Crown O2S, the closure is equipped with an oxygen scavenger. First introduced to the German market, the closure is now being used by Martens Beer in China.

Creating the ‘world’s first’ sports cap for fizzy beverages has been a major coup for Norwegian firm SmartSeal. The SmartSeal FIZZ features a special valve that prevents leakage and loss of fizz. The first commercial application is expected by the end of 2011.

Besides developing FIZZ, SmartSeal has been working on a closure that it says responds to the need for greater ease of use on the go. FLEX features an automatically activated valve which provides spill control and allows one-handed operation. The closure is being used by Icelandic firm Glacial Water on its LazyTown Go Water range.

Lightweighting remains a focus for designers of PET caps. Bericap says ‘raw material saving, CO₂ emission reduction and cost saving measures are major drivers in the industry nowadays’. Its lightweight sports caps, known as the 1881 PUSH PULL, a 3-piece closure, and THUMB’UP, a 2-piece closure, can be opened one-handed.

The firm has also lightweighted its flat closures, and in April 2009, Danone Turkey became the first user of Bericap Turkey’s HexaLite 29/11 SFB 3T, a still water closure for lightweight neck finish 29/25. In Germany, meanwhile, two mineral water producers - Darguner Brauerei and Teinacher - have switched from standard PCO 28 neck to PCO 1881 and Bericap’s DoubleSeal SuperShorty CSD Eco. Bericap claims the combined weight of the new 1881 neck and DoubleSeal SuperShorty CSD Eco closure allows a resin saving of nearly 25% compared to standard PET finishes.

Lightweighting is also taking place on plastics caps destined for the food industry and last year Dutch company Kornelis introduced its E-cap range of lightweight twist-off caps. The caps are 30% lighter than traditional caps, and available in sizes from 63 to 82mm. Dutch company Prinsen has already adopted the closure for a coffee creamer packaged in a glass jar and sold on the German market.

It’s not just vacuum metal closures that can be difficult to open. A similar issue with ring pulls led Impress to develop its Softlift ring pull.

“Conventional ring pulls are often so close to the can end that they can be really difficult for people with long fingernails to open,” says marketing manager Doreen Decker. To help, Softlift has a finger well beneath the ring pull tab. Introduced on 73mm cans in 2008, it was extended to 65mm, 83mm and 99mm cans in October 2009.

Tetra Pak has addressed easier opening with its 34mm diameter SimplyTwist screw cap for the Tetra Brik Edge package, designed with a good non-slip grip and a low opening force, as Matteo Rosi, product director materials and secondary distribution solutions, explains.

“The neck, made of the same LDPE used to coat the carton, is moulded by the filling machine on the flat packaging material before the pack is formed and filled. The over-cap made of HDPE is screwed onto the neck after filling.” Indeed, the combination of the SimplyTwist screw cap and Tetra Brik Edge angled top shape make the package so user friendly that is has been endorsed by the Swedish Rheumatic Association, which chose it as their ‘Package of the Year’ for 2008.